A few of our customers told us about their creative ownership methods and use.

They are very creative ideas on building and effectively using a timeshare portfolio. There is a simple idea to most of these portfolios: Travel to the nicest places they could find as inexpensively as possible. They had found that timeshares let them do this. Their secret is to build a timeshare portfolio. One customer has four consecutive weeks of timeshares at four different resorts around the Gulf Coast of Florida. Each year the customer and his wife travel to Florida and spend four weeks at four nice resorts. Their total housing costs for four weeks is under $2000 (based on the total maintenance fees they pay). The couple is retired, so they have more free time than most people. But their idea is great – and cost effective. They are also not alone. We see more and more people who recognize the value of a timeshare and then purchase multiple properties. These properties to give them cost effective travel at great resorts. Here are a couple Timeshare Portfolio models we have seen our savvy customers use: The «Expressway» Portfolio The scenario given at the beginning of this article is a perfect example of an Expressway Portfolio. In this model, the timeshare property owner wishes to visit a specific geographic repeatedly. The Expressway Portfolio is usually composed of fixed-week properties in the same general area. People who build this portfolio like the idea of spending their vacation time in a specific area. Customers who favor the Expressway Portfolio model often have children or extended families that frequently travel together. Often, the resorts are within a half-day car ride from home. Since the resorts are close, travel expenses are kept to a minimum. The Dartboard Portfolio This Dartboard Portfolio is the model of choice for “empty nesters” or those who have more time and flexibility. This portfolio emphasizes properties acquired primarily for trading, or floating weeks at desirable resorts.

Each year’s vacation planning is like throwing a dart at a dartboard. Each year the Dartboard Portfolio owner works the Exchange companies and resorts to create the best vacations possible. The property owner uses low-maintenance properties and exchanges them for more expensive resort properties. This property owner also uses floating weeks at a favorite resort and reserves each year for the best time possible. The Dartboard Portfolio usually consists of a “foundational resort” that may have cost more than other timeshare properties to acquire. We see many customers in the West using Hawaii properties as “foundational resorts”. They cost more, but they will be visited almost every year. The portfolio is then filled in with trading properties. These are usually two - bedroom units that have low cost annual maintenance fees (typically under $400). These trading units are banked as early in the portfolio-building process. The Portfolio Owner then shops the exchange company for the possible best trade. Factor in Your Available Vacation Time There is no best portfolio; every person’s situation is different. However, we have noticed that portfolio owners keep a few factors in mind.

The first factor they consider is available time.

They ask themselves several key questions: How many weeks of vacation do they have each year? How many vacation weeks can they actually take each year? How many of these weeks do they travel between vacation sites? In other words, how many vacation weeks does the portfolio owner need to stay home. Here’s a suggested rule of thumb: use 50% of your available vacation time with a timeshare. As your vacation time increases, add additional timeshare weeks. Estimate Your Cost Cost is the second key factor. The type of portfolio you choose to build is affected by the cost of travel. If you live in the Midwest, are you ready to pay for yearly airfare to Hawaii? Would it make more sense to acquire a Caribbean timeshare for a little more money up front (but lower annual travel costs)? You can also start with an Expressway Portfolio and transition to a Dartboard Portfolio. As your family matures, you can start to use your existing timeshare weeks more for trade. You may even want to create a hybrid portfolio with some properties at fixed locations to be kept over the long term and some are used solely for trading. Focus on the Reward: More Control, More Fun The best part of building a portfolio is the control you have over purchasing properties. When the right properties are purchased, the focus of your vacation is on the experience, not on the expense.

You spend your time enjoying wonderful places with family and friends – and that’s the reason for owning timeshare properties in the first place.

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business. If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website. To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100). If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site. You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you.

In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for.

For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible. Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

Curious about Internet marketing or network marketing, not sure, what it is, or how it works? Is it a modern day version of a pyramid scheme that is now on the Internet? No, it is not a pyramid scheme it is a network of individuals who sell products. You probably have been one of those consumers.

The way that network marketing functions is that certain individuals have an extensive knowledge of the products that are going too sold. This is not the same as going into a store and asking a sales person for information on a product, they then look at you as if you came from another planet, and they have no idea how to answer your question. Those with this information train others to be as knowledgeable as they are and then they do train others and so on. While the training takes place, each representative will sell the products via word of mouth and everyone profits financially. Multi-level marketing (MLM) differs because they are a large company that will train individuals to sell a product and then these new representatives will train another when they have learned about the products and each works at various levels of compensation. In multi-level marketing (MLM) the companies financial growth does not depend on the amount of products sold their profit comes from the amount of individuals that are part of their company selling the products although they do require that the products are only sold through multi-level marketing (MLM) business. In order to rise to the top of company in the economy of today you usually have to work for them your entire life and that is not done as much as it was done 50 years ago. Most employees are always looking for the better off and will not hesitate to leave the firm they are with if they are offered a better financial package. This is one of the draws of network marketing that they can make a residual income for the rest of their lives and work it as either fulltime or part-time. You can work a current job and do network marketing on the side until you are ready to do network marketing full time. What most people like about this form of income is that there are no barriers to the amount of money you can make or any form of discrimination or the thought of not having enough qualifications.

The risk is low, the financial requirement to start is low, and you do not have to restock items. Your primary investment is a good work ethic and a willingness to meet new people and let them know how their lives can change for the better. http://www.payitforward4profits.com/rodl13

There was a time when roads across America were ‘paved’ with dirt. Gravel was an improvement to these roads, but often came with a washboard feel as the vehicles chattered on to their destination. Simple two lane paved roads would eventually follow and the famed Route 66 took folks on a hill strewn ride across the country. As more and more Americans traveled the demand on these roads increased giving rise to the Interstate system. These four lane systems brought relief to congested roads, but ultimately proved too shortsighted a plan.

Larger cities expanded to multiple lanes and elaborate ramp systems were required to allow a free flow of traffic in most instances. Today road crews across the United States are constantly working to expand, repair and replace the existing infrastructure. Toll roads are built to handle congestion and are used by those who don’t mind paying a little extra to avoid the frustration of traffic. How is traffic managed? A map is always a good place to start in helping you find your way, but so too are road signs and now GPS units that can guide you to your final destination. When it comes to traffic building for your website you may find the process similar to the expansion of America’s road system except, when it comes to traffic building on the Internet, you never start with a proverbial dirt road you build a super highway and wait for traffic to catch up. Initially you may find that traffic your website is slow, no one seems to be able to find their way from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ so they take the off ramp and head back home. Obviously you want them to travel as far as they can so you decide to help them. You work at map building. This process starts with solid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies and continues with a comprehensive site map.

The SEO strategies tell them where to exit and an easy to navigate site allows them to discover where they need to go.

Just like roadside businesses of old you may want to advertise in the ‘map’. On the Internet this is done through banner or PPC advertising. This can also help direct traffic to your destination on the information superhighway. You see, traffic is heavy and without some help in finding your location there will be a whole lot of potential customers that will pass you by going as fast as they can and miss you altogether. For some reason there are online business owners that seem to believe traffic building for their business is about simply developing a website and turning on the welcome sign. Traffic building for the web is all about building the road. Make the road so unavoidable that the buying public can’t miss it. Make the signs very clear, make sure the map includes your business address or in this case the search engines have you ranked well. Make sure the final destination (your website) is worth visiting and spending time with. Build a website – a few might accidentally find you. Build a road – the masses may wonder what’s at the end.

Mark Nenadic When you’re trying to choose the precise niche that your business will fill, the best strategy is to make sure that you know what you’re doing with the product, so that you’ll feel much more comfortable in your niche and you’ll enjoy what you’re doing. The best successes are always achieved by those who like their work. Therefore, the first step that you can take for defining your own niche is to make a list of all the things that you like to do best. This may have to do with your current job, a job you used to have, a hobby you enjoy, an art form, a sport, or anything else that you happen to enjoy in life. Begin by writing down your areas of interest, and then look at each parts of that list separately so that you can break it down into more focused sections. To help to inspire you in building your list, think about the following questions and get your mind moving. Write down everything at first, not really thinking about whether or not it really has potential. The key to this step is simply to get the ideas flowing and see what you come up with, getting it all down on paper. You never know; the idea you write down right now might not seem like much, but when you read it over later, it might stir much bigger thoughts. • Would you like to be in this field every day as your job? • Do you already have any skills or knowledge in that category? • What type of person would be interested in the type of product that would come from that category? • Would you enjoy working with your niche market target? Once you’ve come up with your primary list of interests, use the above questions to go over it and narrow it down to those that have the highest chances of bringing you success.

Give yourself a bit of time to mull over those topics that remain, and choose one of them that appeals to you the most. Use that topic and begin writing down all of the basic things that you would require to learn or obtain in order to achieve success within that category. Put all of these things into a logical order, and then break them down into smaller parts which are then arranged in their own logical orders. Once you’re done, you should have a much clearer idea of what you’ll be able to offer your prospective customers, and if you have the ability and motivation to work toward success in that specific category from your original list. To help determine if your successes are likely, go over your current list and ask yourself the following questions: • Do you have any special knowledge about this topic? • Do you have any skills that are related to this topic? • Are you able to come up with a product that would help or please people in some way within this topic? • Is there anything that you can offer in this topic that is outstanding and not already present in today’s marketplace? Make sure that you’re always writing your ideas down. With all of the thinking and brainstorming you’ll be doing, you’ll be surprised how fleeting ideas are if you don’t get them down on paper. Even if some of them look rather odd when you write them down, when you delve into them, they might have a lot more potential than you first thought. Once you have some substantial ideas in front of you, consider showing them to your friends and family. Listen carefully to their thoughts and opinions and let them inspire you for further ideas and details. You might be surprised at what the people around you might think of that may never have crossed your mind. Another great resource is the internet. Do some research around your topic and prospective product(s), finding websites of general interest and potential competition.

This will give you some great ideas about what’s out there and an understanding of what people are really looking for. It will help you to better polish your idea or develop a whole new one that you think is better.

Ewen Chia If you have a website, you can profit from even the tiniest number of visitors it receives simply by not wasting that traffic. The KEY is in leveraging on each visitor and making sure you have a monetization strategy in place. Once you get this, you can make any website profitable with a little effort. Here are 7 basic ways in which you can profit from your traffic today: 1. Sell a product/service First you can sell a product or service to your visitors. This is the best way to cash in from your own product. Usually an e-book or software works the best – they can be downloaded right away without hassle and shipping charges. 2. Opt-In list It is crucial you try to convert every visitor of yours to a subscriber of your mailing list. The most important asset that an Internet marketer has is his or her list of subscribers.

They define whether you will go far in the online business venture.

With an opt-in list, there are tons of ways you can profit further into the future. You can build repeat customers and turn your list members into partners for your products. For an example of a good opt-in page, visit http://www.InstantMarketingSecrets.com 3. Viral marketing You can provide a free product or bonus on your site to be downloaded by your visitors. Usually it’ll be an e-book where people can read from and learn useful information. In this bonus, you include give away rights and urge readers to give it away to anyone they want to. This way, you increase your own traffic, publicity and branding without needing to spend a cent. 4. ‘Pay-per-click’ In this case, you get paid when your visitors click on ads you place on your site. There are many advertising programs that give you a percentage of the profits based on click through, including Google Adsense, Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera. When people click on the ads shown from either of these advertising programs, you will earn money. And if your site receives good traffic, these programs alone can bring in huge paychecks to you. 5. Offer an advertising space Targeted niche websites with high traffic can ‘rent’ a portion of space on their web page to advertisers. For example you can charge $300 per month in advertising fee if your web page is pulling more than 2000 visitors a day.

I use this strategy at my Online Marketing Secrets blog at http://www.EwenChia.com Other than that, you can also generate advertising revenue using exit pop-ups. By doing this, you won’t clutter your website with too many ads and spoil the visitor’s experience. 6. Affiliate marketing If you don’t have your own products for sale yet, you can sell other people’s products instead and receive a commission on every sale. With affiliate marketing, you have an unlimited source of products to sell and you don’t need to go through any fulfillment issues after your sales. One of the best affiliate marketing training resources can be found at http://www.SecretAffiliateWeapon.com where I provide continual education on affiliate marketing to members. 7. Pay-per-lead Instead of earning money from click through, you are paid if your visitors subscribe into other people’s mailing list. Alternatively there are a lot of big companies like Coca-Cola who need surveys to be done, and by referring your visitors to complete surveys, you can also earn good profits from your website.

Rapidenterprises.net These days, if you want to make sure that your getting, holding, and retaining website visitors that are hungry for whatever it is that you might have to offer then you will want to make sure that you keep up with the new trend of social networking. Having the best computer systems or the new how to book that will revolutionize some industry or an awesome recipe that makes spam into a tasty treat is just not enough to entice internet shoppers to purchase your product anymore.

With all of the research tools such as the amazons, and google search enabled, price comparing websites, shoppers are only going to become returning loyal shoppers when they feel that they know you and can trust you and that you offer some distinct content that they can identify with.

Net savvy consumers are not going to trust strangers with their money anymore regardless how good a product or service might actually be.

Social networking sites are seeing strong growth and have developed a unique online presence that is continually refreshed by user generated content, and this promotes ongoing consumer interest and visitor loyalty. So where are the visitors that you want and need at your web - site gathering and more importantly, returning and staying? According to Nielsen//NetRatings, MySpace.com heads the list with with 38.4 million unique visitors and a year over year growth rate of 367 percent. Blogger takes the Next position at number 2, garnering 18.5 million unique visitors and growing 80 percent year over year, followed by Classmates Online with 12.9 million unique visitors and a 10 percent year-over-year increase. Rounding out the top five social networks is the New on the scene «YouTube» and the old guard and standby «MSN Groups» with 12.5 million and 10.6 million unique visitors, respectively. Although it’s not certain yet how strong these social sites will become given the youthful nature of most of their clientele, it is certain that they will not be going anywhere soon.

Those youthful members of such online communities Buy, and when they do, they also tell their friends, «a lot of friends» about that cool new widget that they just bought from a great website that they found from their network. Repeat visitors are up to 8 times more likely to make a purchase than a new visitor according to a study by » study by WebSideStory».

The normal conversion rate of between 1.5% and 3% for new visitors has never been much to get excited about, but with an estimated 45% of all internet users spending more and more of their time at MySpace, MSN Groups, and elsewhere, website trade is also growing at a tremendous pace with up to 23% conversion rates not uncommon. In my book, those figures are enough to convince this old grand-paw that it’s time to pay attention to the youth of our society and to follow their lead. Have you hugged your teenager today?

It is every individuals dream and aim to make money and more money than what he or she is making at present. If you already have a job, you still want to know how you could have a second income too. This make you wonder how you can find the time for it . Expenses run high and you need a second income A regular job may just see you through the basic expenses, but if there are extras to pay for, you will need to make money to see you through the added expenditure. To get another outside job even if it is part time, would mean spending almost all your time away from your home and family.

It is much better to seek an online job where you can earn the second income and make money and also be at home with the rest of your family. Even is you live alone, there is no place like home and it is nice to come back and spend time there. So to make money, you could get an online job. You have no option but to make more money With prices increasing, and everything costing much more, what you earn maybe sufficient only for the bare necessities. If you want some luxuries and goodies for yourself and the rest of your family, you will have to think of ways and means to make money. The online work is not the only option, you could also start an online business and make money to provide your family with some of the extras that you have in mind. Higher education also costs a lot more and if you want to give a good foundation to your children or anyone in the family you would have to make money for it. The holiday of your dreams You are planning a holiday to a place of your dreams and want to make money for it. All this can become a reality if you take on added work and make money for it. This is no impossible task, as you can do additional online work and make as much money as you want, by putting in more amount of work.

Unlike a regular office job, where you get the same amount of salary no matter how many hours of work you put in, in online work, the more you work the more you can earn.

Plan your additional expenses and work towards it Once you have an idea of how much extra money you will need for a certain requirement, you can easily time the period by when you will have this money, by doing online work. Knowing what your skills are you can take on jobs that you will be able to do to the best of your ability and swiftly too. Learn make money online and cater to all your needs without having to give up on what you want in life. Ways to make money There are countless ways of making money and if you want to do some research on this, the easiest way to go about it is to search on the internet. This way you will get a wide range of information and go for what you feel suits you best. The more information you get from the internet the better will be your possibilities to make money.

Starting a small home business is an exciting adventure. You can make a great deal of money and be completely self-sufficient with a small home business. The key factor is to be organized and plan for the start-up prior to depending on the business completely. You need to give the business time to grow and flourish before you run it solely for your income needs. Let’s review some of the basics for staring a small home business. Select a business that you know about or can do a little research and learn. You will spend many hours in your home business and should find one that you can be passionate about. The majority of people spend forty hours a week away from home at their jobs. If you don’t count the amount of time that you sleep, the average person spends roughly twenty hours a week in their homes.

This is half the time that they are at work. A small home business will take around fifty hours a week once it is up and running. If you are not passionate about the type of business, this can be a recipe for complete disaster. After all one of the benefits of a small home business is getting to work in an area that you enjoy and love a great deal. Be realistic about your expectations for the small home business. For example, if you want to make and sell candles be realistic as to how many you can produce and market each week. Don’t plan to make a profit on 500 candles being sold each day if you’re not going to realistically be able to make that many in your home business. Many people dream too far outside of the box and aren’t in touch with reality when it comes to starting a small home business. You should sit down and realistically think about the business and what type of work is involved. Have realistic expectations of what you can and cannot reasonably do working part time to start and then full time later down the road. Review how a small home business is run. Regardless of service or product, businesses are basically run in the same manner. Many business methods apply to a variety of small home based types of businesses. There are traditional methods for keeping various records. You will need to know the basic tax laws for your area and the business license requirements. Additionally, you will want to accurate business records. There are many different types of software that can help you with the organization and running of your new small home business. Reviewing the basics of how to run a small home business will enable you to stay organized, focused and set on your goals. Find out if there is a market for your product or service. What type of competition is in the area? What can you offer different than your competitors.

Many new small home business groups fail because they have not anticipated the competition in the area or the need for their product or service. For example, if you want to start a dog walking home business but the surrounding condo and apartment complexes do not allow pets there might not be a very high demand for your service.

They end up falling in love with whatever home business, product or service they are marketing. Now I am not knocking anyone who is in love with their home business. You know whatever floats your boat. But being too emotional about your home business can actually hurt your business. And I will also go into some other home business practices I find to be worthless. First you should believe in your home business and have confidence in marketing it to the masses. But you must understand your home business is a vehicle used to get you from point A to point B. Your home business is being used to help you reach whatever goal or dream you have in life. Just like if you fly from Los Angeles to New York City you do not have to love the plane in order to take the trip. The plane is just used to take you from point A to point B just like your home business. You owe no loyalty to one company and you should not feel tied down to one home business opportunity. Remember home businesses are just vehicles to take you to your goals in life, that’s it nothing more. You do not have to be loyal to one home business, you should create multiple streams of income with many different home businesses. The next gimmick I see is home business meetings where everyone is cheering and chanting. I remember my first MLM meeting and I remember walking in and thinking everyone was on something. After a few meetings I realized most of the crowd was broke and just trying to fake the funk. You do not have to cheer and chant in order to be successful at your home business. Building a home business should not be like joining a cult. Your home business should be run like a business. And in business results matter not hype. You should take this approach to your recruiting efforts as well. Do not let anyone join your downline who does not meet your standards. Do a screening process before you allow anyone to work with you. The reasons for this are plentiful. First off this is YOUR HOME BUSINESS, treat it as such. You only want quality people around you, take nothing less. If you do happen to take on a bad apple it could ruin your team and will drain your energy.

I make it clear to anyone joining my team that I am available for support but I am not here to be a babysitter. I make it clear that this is their business and they must work in order to make it a success. Keep your relationships with your team at a professional level, period. You need to make it clear this is a business, and we are here to help grow our business, that’s it. If you do start personal relationships with your team, you will see your profits dwindle and much of your time will be used playing team psychologist’s instead making your home business grow. This may seem a little too cutthroat but you must understand you cannot allow anyone to waste your time or energy. And especially when running a home business you will run across all types of characters. You must run a tight ship in order to be successful in your home business and you must understand home businesses make it possible for you to live out your financial dreams, so it is always great to have more than one.

Here’re seven simple yet POWERFUL ideas for you to reflect on. This will assist you adjust your marketing strategies…which will have a GREAT result on everything you sell. 1. You don’t let people know anything about your business. They will feel more comfortable if they know who they are buying from. Publish a section called «About Us» on your web site. Include your business history, profile of employees, contact information etc. 2. You don’t make people feel secure when they order. Remind people that they are ordering through a secure server. Tell them you won’t sell their e-mail address and all their information will be kept confidential. 3. You don’t tell again people to come back and visit. People usually don’t purchase the first time they visit. The more times they visit your site, the greater the chance they will buy.

4. You don’t invest in online advertising. Follow the “First impression is the last impression” rule. Your advertiser is one who will be marketing from your side even while you are sleeping in a bed or out of vacation! Always go for economical, tested advertiser. 5. You don’t make your ad copy attractive. Your ad is not watchful. Ad does not attract at your target audience. You don’t list any testimonials or guarantees. 6. You don’t make your web site appear professional. Your web site should be easy to navigate through. The graphics should be related to the theme of your web site. 7. You don’t test and improve your ad before going online. You have to continually test and improve your ad copy to get the highest possible response rate. Ken John helps small personal website owners “do more with less” to operate and market their small and growing businesses. He is the author of How To Make Your Business Run Without Your Presence, and Instant Marketing for Small Site Owners. Carter offers FREE book chapters, and distributes free business-building advice in his twice-monthly Blog answers, available at http://www.innovativepixelpage.com ,one of the most reputed Pixel Page Advertising Company.

From the desk of: John Arrington Friday 8:45 pm Home based businesses are where the average person can become rich in a short period of time. Big things are happening in cyber space. And those who have their own web site or have joined an affiliate program have caught the wave. You can reach a vast amount of people to sell your products to world wide. Never before in history has the average person been able to reach so many customers with just a flip of the wrist. All you need to make a living off the internet is: 1. A web site.

2. A hot product or program to sell. 3. And tons of traffic. The more traffic, the better your chances are at becoming rich. And some of the best places to get all this traffic are FREE. And here is a tip for any home based business: Sell more than one product from your web site is the way to go. Yes, selling more than one product is a great idea. Why? Because if one product was to slow down for some reason or the other, the other ones will carry it. So, your income would still come in. You see this way you will have multiple streams of income coming in from one web site. Here is another marketing tip: Advertise all your products or programs from one web site. This way you will only have to promote one link. And that would be a link to your web site offering all your products. Having multiple streams of income all coming in from one web site is how the big guys are making their fortunes. So why not you? All you need is a computer, web site, products or programs to sell, and a huge amount of traffic to your web site. That’s all it takes to make anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 per year.

All from the comfort of your home.

But to make this happen you have to stay focused and advertise the heck out of your web site.

I mean everywhere. Free and Payed ads. Offline and online. Internet success doesn’t happen insanely, but with a lot of will power and patience you will success. It all boils down to how determined you are at becoming successful. And if your heart is not into it, you will struggle along the way. To me what could be better then working the hours you want. And make more money doing what you like to do. And that is working less or working smart. For many people business opportunities offer them the freedom they’ve been looking for. And they get to call the shots because they work from their homes. No bosses looking over their shoulders, they collect the checks. I know that I’m not comfortable having a boss looking over my shoulder. So there is money to be made from starting your own Home Based Business. Just get started. If you’re having financial difficulties right now. I want to let you know there is hope. Just start placing FREE Classified ads, join free traffic exchange web sites. Write articles and submit them FREE. Just get started TODAY, place Free Classified ads. Never let up on advertising. I guarantee, you will never run out of places to advertise your web site for FREE. “The Shocking Truth” The more you advertise, the more traffic, the more sales, the more money you will make. Hey, don’t laugh I have heard about people giving up and quitting because they wasn’t making enough money fast enough from their Internet Business.

I know what happened is, they advertised a little here and a little there. And nothing happened. Or they got so wound up in lifes shuffles and got so busy, and forgot about advertising aggressively. So their dreams slowing died. And they returned back to their 9-5 slave jobs. Don’t let this happen to you.

Stay focused on your dreams and make them come true. Just advertise the heck out of your web site. Stop Putting Off Your Future! You are not getting younger and no one will do it for you. You have to make your dreams come true. You know, one thing will never change about any business past, present, and future, they all must advertise aggressively to make a decent income. The serious money is being made by everyone who is promoting the heck out of their web site. Advertising should be our every move. Stop playing around and get serious about Advertising. You will have enough time to play later when the money starts rolling in. But until then you can’t afford not to advertise. There is nothing else whatsoever you need to do to make some serious money off the internet. And all that is, ADVERTISE, AGGRESSIVELY. I can’t tell you enough that is the SHOCKING TRUTH about Internet Marketing. ADVERTISING! Why is this so shocking? People tend to drift in their thinking. They do something for awhile and then they don’t complete what they where doing. Than they try to do something else different. So, the Shocking Truth about Internet Marketing is, Stay focused on the task before you.

And get serious about advertising.

Stop Jumping web site to web site looking for another product to sell. If you can’t get the one you have now up and running, what makes you think you could get another one up and running? The truth is stop wasting your precious time hopping web site to web site.

Your web site is just like your business, in fact it is an extension of your business in some cases and it IS your business in others. Your advertising campaign must address each of these methods to the best and fullest extent possible given your advertising budget. Let’s take a look at how you can use these different advertising methods to your best advantage: Using Articles to market your web site Short articles are a great way to generate traffic to your website.

Articles can be used to keep the material fresh on the site so that your customers keep coming back, they can also be used to ‘advertise’ your site on web sites owned by others.

Placing your article on article submission sites allows others to download it and use your article in their newsletters and on their web sites. Of course there are links in the article that point to your site for more information or other reviews etc. These links are great as they help increase your standings in the search engines. The articles can be about any topic and you will find there are hundreds of article submission sites available to place your articles on. Most are free as they need fresh information so that their customers keep coming back as well. Iwantabusiness.biz is a new article submission site that I have started to give you an idea of what one is like. Feel free to post your articles on this site if they pertain to small business or home based businesses. Using Affiliates to market your web site Affiliate programs can add thousands of independent sales people to help market your products and services. Over the years I have been involved with many businesses, and one of the things I remember from my Amway days was that as an individual, I could only do so much.

I have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year in which I can work.

I will hit a maximum point of sales that I can handle by myself.

After that I’m done. The only way to do more is to automate and have others duplicate what I do. The same is true on the web. We need to automate and duplicate what we do so we can have others expand our sales for us. The first part of this equation is duplication. We can have others follow what we do and sell our products and services for us and pay them a portion of the profits. This is different than having employees. Employees have no requirement to sell. They are overhead that must be paid regardless of sales. That is NOT what you want for a new business. Keep your hard earned cash for other things. What we need is someone that is willing to do the work for part of the profits. This is where affiliate programs come in to our formula for success. Affiliates are basically a partnership between web sites to advertise and promote products, services, or information for a share of the profits. When someone they refer to you buys, you pay them a percentage of the sales. Result? More traffic, more sales and less time required by you to find the customers as someone else does it for you. What else can a good affiliate program do for you? • How about driving more traffic to your site! • Build brand awareness as more people visit your site from the hundreds or thousands of affiliates that are advertising for you.

• Obtaining qualified leads that you can follow-up on to increase or up sell to. • Increasing the links to your site which will increase the ranking of your site on the search engines resulting in more traffic and more sales. There are all kinds of affiliate programs. Some programs charge to be a member and some do not. Some are web based and some are software programs that you load on your computer to set up and track the sales and affiliate yourself. Which one you use is up to you. Here are a few that I have found. Affiliate Net – This is one of the more affordable server side affiliate programs.

With this software there are no monthly fees only a one time software charge. At the time of this writing this package sold from $49.95 to $99.95. Referral Software – This package is also server side although more expensive, it has many more features and is worth while to consider if you are serious about earning a lot of money with your Internet business. At the time of this writing this package sold for $299.00. Click Bank – This is a web based affiliate program. By signing up on their web site you have access to over 100,000 affiliates. There are monthly and set up fees. clixGalore Affiliate Networks – This is a web based affiliate program. There are monthly and set up fees. I highly recommend affiliate programs. For the reasons listed above. Remember they will help drive traffic to your site, which means more sales and you can use the affiliate programs to offer others services and make the commission once you are done with the client. This could be a good business all by its self. Using Auctions to market your web site Ok, you have a product or service you want to sell; you need to let people know about that product or service and you don’t have much money to spend. Imagine a place that gets over 3 million customers that are ready, able, willing and looking to buy everyday. It is a Super Mall! Ask any business person what they would pay to be in a mall that got 3 million visitors a day.

You can see the dollar signs light up in their eyes… both in terms of cost and sales potential.

Remember my goal from earlier in the course when we talked about business planning? I need to have 4200 visitors a month come to my web site in order to sell 420 copies according to my business plan.

Well E-Bay gets 3 million visitors a day! Do you think that might be a place that I would want to advertise my books or my web site? You bet! In fact I have sold quite a few of my other books on E-Bay as well as bottles, baseball cards, clothing, computers, software, training, video and much more. So can you. Let’s take my Weekend Chef’s guides and see how I can sell them on E-Bay, Yahoo Auctions, or MSN Auctions. First I need an account. This is simple, but does vary based on who you are signing up with. Follow the instructions (at the end of this page is an excellent course on how to really make money on auctions, but this will get you started). Once you have an account, we now need to place something for sale. Think of the auction site as your web site As such we need to create a web page that offers you product/service for sale.

I use a software package call Auction Wizard 2000.

They have an excellent program that allows you to try it for 60 days before you have to register. It is so easy to use as well. Using Auction Wizard, I can create an auction page and automatically post it and repost as needed to any of the supported auctions. No special knowledge of html is required.

Simple fill in the blanks and add any pictures or graphics and I’m done.

It also will track the sales, send emails to successful bidders, track inventory and so much more. If you are thinking of doing auctions, this is one piece of software to take a hard look at. Back to selling my guides and building my business. Within the auction listing, I can place a link to my site, offer a free download of some chapters of the book, of course, I will need your email before you can download. Remember, I need to keep you coming back. Be careful here, E-Bay does not like you selling outside of their auction so make sure the visitor is not allowed to buy from your site at that link. Well, now we have given something away for free (a chapter of the book), we have the visitors email address, and we hopefully will get a bid on the product/service. If not, we have the email to follow up. What has it cost us? Each item up for auction on E-Bay cost ….

are you ready for this 30 cents to list it plus a small percentage of the selling cost. If I list my Weekend Chef’s Guide to Sushi on E-Bay with a starting price of say $1 it will cost me a total of about 30 cents for the week. 30 cents to reach millions of potential customers a day. If I sell the book, I will have recovered my 30 cents and started building my customer email list as well. Now I could write a whole web site on using auctions, but this page is just h

ow to use auctions to market your business.

You can sell items and make a profit or you can just list items and build a customer database to market to later. Either way Auctions make a great way to market your business. I have on my website a couple more tips on using auctions as well at rd-webhosting.com or visit my eBay store for other eBooks that are available from time to time. Using Auto responders to market your web site Depending on the products, services or information you are selling auto responders may be able to automate a good portion of your web site business. An auto responder is a piece of software that checks email for certain words or phrases and responds according to your wishes. For example, you may have received a newsletter by sending an email to me with Subscribe as the subject. My auto responder sees that email come in and has a set of actions defined that when the subject has subscribe in it that it will email back to you our newsletter. Another thing that the auto responders can do is following up with your customers at predetermined times with a predetermined letter. This is good for driving traffic to your site after they have visited and left their email address such as to subscribe to a newsletter or download a free chapter of an e-book or other information you have made available. For my training business I send up to 4 different emails to each person that request my guide to increase their income.

Each email introduces them to other benefits and services that are available. Some of the emails will offer a discount or free training class as an incentive to sign up for a class. All of it done without me having to get involved. Auto responders can be installed on your computer or used via the Internet. Some are free and others you have to pay either by the email address or based on the number of responses you want to program it to respond to. Here are some links to auto responders on the web as well as a software package with a trial version you can use yourself. Promasoft: This is the one we use with our servers. I highly recommend. They have a trial version that is a full version. It places a header in the outgoing email, so you will want to register once you have it up and running.

I think it is a great program. GetResponse: This is also a great program, although, this one is a subscription service. It can be a less expensive way to try out an auto responder. They do offer a free account as well. This is part one of a multi-part series of Marketing you web site. In the next section we will cover marketing you web site using banner ads and classified ads .

One is a successful Home Business and the other is a failed Home Business. First, the successful business owners should find out why the other group failed, and the failed business owners should find out how the other group is successful. At one particular stage in everyone’s life, they will realize the importance of time, money and freedom. They will learn that having a Home business is an asset and one of the most effective form of business for an individual to reach the goal of having more time, money and freedom. Home Business Entrepreneurs can be slow walkers but the important point is they should never walk backwards. They don’t have to worry, if their progress is slow but the major concern is, they should be steady. Slow walkers, please understand that Experience makes you modified, Training makes you qualified and only Involvement makes you satisfied and successful. If you really want to enjoy free time with your family, spend more money to fulfill your child’s dreams and help others by helping yourselves, then Home Business is the best concept, that will help you to achieve everything. Any Home Business is started to be successful, but does it happen every time, everywhere and to everyone.

Nooooo….

In a classroom, where there are 50 students, only one student can achieve 1st position, 80% can achieve pass and 20% can just fail. Does this means that the tutor is not qualified? Does this mean that the teacher did not teach properly. The same way all the home businesses that yields good money are good businesses. Only the business owners should decide, whether they should come on top or just fail. When some people are able to achieve financial freedom through a particular business, why can’t the others doing the same business cannot achieve…? The problem is their ATTITUDE… They should understand that Winners don’t waste time in unproductive thoughts. Winners think constructively and they know that their level of commitment and consistency determines their success. Success is not an accident. It is the result of your attitude and your attitude is a choice. Hence Success is a matter of choice and not chance. If you really want to succeed, form the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do. Learn the secrets of success from the life histories of successful people. If we identify and adopt the qualities, strategies and characteristics of successful home business owners, you too shall be successful. Success in Home Business is not magic or underground secrets to be revealed, it is nothing but the result of consistently applying some basic principles.

In Home Business, success is not only earning million dollars, but also earning the goodwill of our business associates, clients and followers. Moreover, Success in our Home Business should be duplicated, by teaching our subscribers or followers, everything from A to Z, so that his Home Business will be successful and he will make us more successful by default. With internet, people can leverage on internet to build their business at the comfort of their home and build dreams of having more time, money and freedom for themselves. When all Successful Home Business Entrepreneurs met in a seminar, their reasons for success was discussed and everyone came out with one single answer….made up of 4 words ILMB….and the meaning is I LOVE MY BUSINESS. I too love my business and that is why I am also successful.

Do you feel like every dime you make gets sucked into a black hole to pay bills and leaves you asking yourself, “Where did all the money go?” Want to know an age old secret? You have to make the money before you can spend it! How do you do that? It’s called INCOME PLANNING.

Here are some steps you can do every week to make more money.

RESEARCH YOUR MARKET – First, find out what products or services your customers want and then provide that. One way to find out what they want is to look over your sales receipts, and find out what product is selling the best. Ask the customers 1) why they bought the item, and 2) what they expected it to do for them. Now use what they said in your advertising to promote that product. PROMOTE TO YOUR MARKET – There is an art to promoting something so that it will be responded to by your customers. Promotion does not necessarily mean offering a discount. It’s more important to find out why a customer wants or needs what you have to offer, and what they will base their buying decision on. Price may not be as important as fast delivery and dependable service. Find inexpensive, but effective ways to promote. Collect business cards from potential customers, and send them a personal letter letting them know how your products/services can benefit them. It is one of the least expensive, most personal promotional actions you can do. A series of postcards mailed at regular intervals to current and potential customers can also be very effective. Another great way to get new business is to ask your satisfied customers for referrals. You can make it fun for your customers to participate by creating a referral game they can play, where they get something in return for a certain number of referrals who buy.

Let your customers help you out. They really do want you to do well in your business. SELL AND DELIVER – Selling is easier when you are genuinely interested in your customers and want to help them. ASK your customers what they need and want. Then it becomes much easier to sell them that product or service. For example, a family of 4 who wants a van to cart the kids and their equipment around to sports activities is going to walk off in disgust if the salesperson is showing them 2-door sports models, despite the fact that the sports car is a good deal. Once you’ve sold the product or service, fast, courteous, professional delivery is key to customer satisfaction. This is especially important if you are in a service business. Delivering what you promised, when you promised it, can mean repeat business and referrals for new business. PREVENT THE WASTE OF RESOURCES – For every dollar you agree to spend in your business, ask how it is going to bring $5 or more worth of income back into your business. Carve out a percentage of the income every week to fund a promotional budget and then figure out the most effective ways to reach your customers within the budget. It is no laughing matter when the income you worked hard to earn gets wasted on things that do not give you a return on your investment. REPEAT SUCCESSFUL PROMOTIONAL ACTIONS – Look back at when you were last making the most sales. Find out what your successful actions were at the time and do those actions again. Focus your time, energy, and creative thinking power on planning how to get the money in. That gets the CASH FLOWing in the right direction and puts your attention back on servicing your customers and you will enjoy your business even more.

There are a lot of less than forthright organizations that allegedly help individuals sell their inventions to industry. In all my years of working as a patent lawyer, I have never come across a single person who ever used one of these organizations to effectively market or sell their invention. However, I have met several who successfully marketed their inventions themselves. Before you take any steps to market your invention, you should take a few preliminary steps. Preliminary Patent Search – A preliminary patent search is generally a good first step. A preliminary search of various patent offices can be conducted for a reasonable fee (just contact a patent agent/lawyer), and it is even possible to conduct one for free (see the US patent office at http://www.uspto.gov/) Patent Application – Don’t publically disclose your invention until after a patent application is filed. Publically disclosing the invention before filing a patent application can potentially ruin the chances of ever being granted a valid patent. In fact, many Companies will not even talk to you until you have filed a patent application. Prepare a Formal Information Package – You should prepare an informative and concise information package describing you, your invention and the potential market your invention reaches.

The package should include color photographs of the invention, and a one page executive summary. Prototype – It is a lot easier to sell a product if potential buyers can see, touch and feel the product. Building a working prototype is often a key step in selling your invention. Of course, some products are difficult to prototype, in which case a non-working mock-up may have to do. In any event, create the most professional prototype or mock-up you can. Obtain Financing – Building prototypes and filing patent applications require funds. Finding that initial start up funding is often difficult; however, there are two tried and true methods, namely partnerships and incorporations. A signed partnership agreement is one way for a few people to pool their financial resources into a project. If several investors are involved, then an incorporated company is a better method. Essentially, the company takes ownership of the invention and the investors contribute money to the company in exchange for shares. The number and price of the shares can be tailored to suit the particular needs of the project. Now that we have dealt with some of the preliminary issues, let us look at the mechanics of selling your invention to a company. The actual steps in the process are as follows: 1. Compiling a List of Potential Buyers – Finding a company that is willing to buy the invention is the most challenging part of the process. It begins by generating a list of companies that may be interested in the invention. You can use a business directory to generate that list. Business directories list companies by the products they manufacture (or services they provide) and include basic information about these companies such as their address, phone and fax number, and the name of the president (CEO or owner). Suitable business directories may be found in the business section of the local reference library.

You simply call up each company on the list and ask them if they would be interested in receiving a solicitation for a new invention. Then get the contact information about who in the company to send your information to. 3. Presenting the Invention to Prospects – After you have thinned out your list, your next step is to submit your information to each of the companies on the list. This may involve calling the people identified to be the “contact” for new product ideas and telling them that you are sending them an information package about your product. Your package should include a cover letter and a one page synopsis of your product (including a picture). The information must be clear, concise and it must appear as professional as possible. Don’t try to overwhelm the recipient – you want to impress them, not burden them. 4. Follow Up – Do not expect the prospect to come to a quick decision concerning the invention. It may take a prospect many months (even a year or more) to make up his/her mind on a project. You have to be patient. It is important to periodically follow up with the company but do not “pester” the prospect. Remember, the people considering your invention are probably quite busy with several other projects – annoying them may do little to speed the project up and may cause them to drop the project altogether.

5. Negotiations – If you find a company that is interested in picking up the project, then be ready to negotiate the terms of the sale. The key here is to be reasonable. From my experience, nothing kills off a potential licencing deal faster than an unreasonable inventor. Realistically, the most you are likely to get is a good return on your investment. Asking for a smaller signing fee together with a modest royalty is far more likely to generate a signed agreement than holding out for a big payoff. 6. Royalty Amount – I am usually asked the question “how much can I sell my invention for”. I don’t know the answer; however, here are a few rules which can help you figure out a reasonable royalty rate. First of all, try to negotiate a royalty which is broken down in to two parts, an initial signing payment and an annual royalty payment. The initial payment should cover most of your costs of the project. The annual royalties should represent an amount which is sufficient to represent a good return on your investment without being a burden on the manufacturer. The general “rule of thumb” is to ask for a small percentage (1% to 5%) of the net sales of the product. It is also possible, and in some cases advisable, to fix the annual royalty payment to an easily calculated amount (e.g. $1.00 per unit sold). Selling your invention to a manufacturer is possible but it is not easy. How successful are you likely to be? From my experience, individual inventors are far more likely to successfully sell their invention by themselves then by going through some invention promotion organization. Like any business, the chances of success are a function of your determination, knowledge and willingness to take risks.

If you are not a full-fledged geek, AKA, programmer this is new tool is not for you! A Silicon Valley startup launched a search engine in March that will allow developers to search for code and source code.

Sorry Martha, (Steward that is) I’m afraid your wonderful “Docorating the Drive with Pink Lillies” will not appear in the search engine result on this site. The name of the engine is Krugle, and it will provide simple search for retrieving information related to source code – as well as other techy info – all from an easy to use, un-cluttered GUI. It is surely possible to use Google for programmers to find source code, but this can be a tricky task. The new engine functions by crawling, indexing, and parsing its information from open source directories and archives. It also pulls its results from Email lists, blogs and websites. Kruggle says the site will run using open source and private technology. For open source, Apache Software called “Nutch and Lucine” is used. The parsing is done using a generator called “Another Tool for Language Recognition.” It is similar to two other search tools called Koders and another Codefetch. What should be different with Kruggle is it will permit programmers and developers to notate the results they find, make bookmarks, and save their results in their own space (incidently, in early May, Google announced a similar feature that allowed users to save results in their own workspace). Using the workspace gives coders exact URLs in order to share their results with others. Users will also be able to separate coding pieces to see the differences between various languages. For example, it may be that an ASP programmer could search for “ASP content management system”.

Click-to-call is an emerging contextual advertising format that will help spark the growth of localized search. It links online users to offline advertisers by combining Internet telephone capabilities. Although it has yet to hit its stride as a platform or even pierce consumer consciousness, the biggest interactive names, like Google, Yahoo, and eBay, are positioning themselves for a future in click-to-call. Let’s take a closer look. Click-to-call ads (CTC) are delivered, like pay-per-click, through standard online search results. They mostly resemble standard paid search ads, too. The user sees the familiar text in a box, except there is an icon that can be clicked to connect the interested party with the designated advertiser via telephone.

This process is fully online until the user activates the CTC functionality by clicking that icon delivered with the ad. Next, the user is prompted to enter their telephone number, which may or may not be already stored with the search engine. Once the phone number is entered, the search engine calls the user and connects the advertiser at no cost to the user. It should be noted that search engines will be adamant about protecting the anonymity of user phone numbers in order to placate any understandable fears of being added to telephone marketing lists. It will be imperative for search engines to build user confidence because trust is precious, especially when introducing new products. Since CTC incorporates phone use through the Internet, VoIP specific companies like Vonage and Fusion will be parlaying their niche of Internet telephony into partnerships with bigger Internet properties, as evidenced by Skype’s sale to eBay. Even an online advertising agency like ICMediaDirect.com has to consider the impact of a “hybrid” service, like click-to-call, will have on search marketing. Isn’t it funny how convergence, the calling card of technological progress, can make the telephone cutting edge? Experts aren’t expecting great revenue generation straight out of the gate, but click-to-call could be at the forefront of yet another giant tech-based advertising expansion.

One area that click-to-call may impact is local search. I believe CTC has enough functionality to ignite the long anticipated surge of localized search as a leading format of small business advertising. For example, if a person finally has had enough of a bad back – where do they go to find a chiropractor, the Internet? Could be. That’s where we can research and get a phone number. Just think what a chiropractor would pay per click of that icon that rings his office and the sufferer simultaneously. And you thought pay-per-click was targeted and relevant? Finding out which businesses will advertise on local search via click-to-call is an easy task – they’re the ones filling the yellow pages of your phone book. These small businesses (think: pizza parlors, law offices, florists) are already heavily vested in local advertising, yet almost none use search advertising because the format has yet to incorporate small business.

It’s believed that there are nearly 15 million small businesses in the United States today and almost none are benefiting from local search the way that it’s envisioned. When geo-targeted search is smoothed out and more popular, and CTC gets rolling, local advertising will realize more convenience and more targeting – and the world will witness another online advertising revolution. Click-to-call is even more targeted than the pay-per-click search format as we know it today. Advertisers are going to pay more for CTC because anyone who takes the time to call is certainly a higher-percentage paying customer than your basic web surfer who indicates interest. While some web surfers may click ads to satisfy curiosity, few visitors will be clicking icons to make idle talk with businesses – as far as I can tell, this isn’t an issue for businesses listed in the Yellow Pages. Click-to-call is a potent ad format and advertisers are going to shell out top dollars for it.

Keep an eye out for developments in this format and be ready to adjust your strategies accordingly. Joseph Pratt Media Analyst ICMediaDirect.com http://www.icmediadirect.com e: joseph@icmediadirect.com

Brad Beiermann Ph.D. How many of you online store owners love selling items with higher profit margins? Higher margins, means more money in your pocket, right? If you are the smart business owner, you have answered yes to both questions. One more question for you.

Why did your customer buy these higher margin, and often higher priced, items from you? Okay, now the answers start to vary.

In truth, customers buy for their own reasons, not ours. We might think we know why they bought it with a certain degree of accuracy, but do we ever really know their innermost reason for why they made the purchase? In fact, most experts will be quick to point out the fact, we never really know 100%. The reason they buy, is often different than reason we thought. No matter what you are selling on your online store, your customer will only buy two things: 1) Solutions to problems, and 2) Good feelings. The rest of this article will focus on the «good feelings» part. When your customer buys from you, they generally feel good about it in some form or another. Proof…Would you spend your money on something (or someone) you did not feel good about? Of course not, we want to feel good about the things we buy. Your customers are no different. So, what is making these folks feel good about buying from you? In short, it is trust. Good feelings come from trust and the secure feelings that come with it. Trust is something earned without a fixed time period. In other words, trust can be built quickly, or it can take a long time to be built. With a product, trust is often built in the form of value. They ask themselves, «Is this a good deal?» If the answer is «Yes» the odds of a transaction occurring goes up greatly. If the answer is «No», you have not won any good feelings or trust from them.

Let’s take a look at this thing called «value» and how it is perceived by your customer. What exactly is perceived value? By dictionary definition — It is the state of worth recognized by interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory insight, intuition, or knowledge gained by the senses. Whew! That’s a bunch to grasp in one reading of that sentence. For the rest of us non-Mensa members, let’s simplify. Perceived value is someone’s gut feel about the worth of a product. It’s our own appraisal based on what we know. The original definition mentions words like sensory, senses, and memory. This suggests we, and our customers, get perceived value from our surrounding environment, or the things we have been directly exposed to in the past. Customers have this inherent feeling before they come to your online store. If you are able to recognize this fact, you are in a much better position to understand your market. If perceived value is ignored during your pricing strategies, that could spell trouble. Last year I helped a friend with a trade show he was having with one of his new products. He had the product, a very unique household lamp, patented and had it being made in the USA for just a few dollars labor. Not bad. The parts used in the lamp brought it’s wholesale price close to eighty dollars. Still, not bad considering this was a unique custom made piece retailing at three hundred dollars. The product was being offered on his website, the number of inquiries and emails he was receiving about the product was mind boggling, literally hundreds a week. This was just for one lamp! It sounded like he had a hit on his hands. During the four day trade show, thousands of people stopped by the booth and marveled at this product. There were people stopping by the booth just to see what all the attention was about. Several TV news stations stopped by the booth to film the product and interview it’s inventor. Customers wanted this product real bad. As the trade show came to a close on its last day, how many units were sold? Zero…None…Nada.

Ouch! What happened? The number one comment from customers, «That is awesome!» or «Brilliant!» or «I gotta get one!» The number two comment from customers «Why is this thing so darn high in price?» or «That price seems really high.» Clearly, perceived value was coming into play. So how much did these customers expect this product to retail? One show attendee gave the best clue about the perceived value — «It seems like this would go for about $50 at a store like Wal-Mart.» What is the point of all of this? As you look for potential wholesale suppliers for your online store, it will be important to know about perceived value. Consider the following questions when evaluating a supplier who has made their own product: 1. How has the response been to the price points of the product(s) you are offering? 2. Has the product been market tested at a trade show? How was the response? 3. Does the product sell itself at this price point? 4. Has anyone done a market appraisal of the product? Getting a barometer on the perceived value will be an important ingredient to your online product portfolio. Armed with just a few of these questions, you will have done yourself justice.